Mooncakes

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SYNOPSIS:

A story of love and demons, family and witchcraft.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.

One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.

Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

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REVIEW

(4 STARS)

"Mooncakes" was an amazing read!

The art is gorgeous - it made me think of old Asian cartoons I used to watch on TV when I was younger - and the story was extremely interesting, not only because it was about witches and werewolves (I LOVE FANTASY), but also because it discussed topics such as religion, spirituality, and gender identities (our main characters fall in the LGBTQ+ spectrum).

I loved the relationship between Nova and Tam. It was the first book I read portraying a non-binary character and it was the perfect opportunity for me to discover more about this gender. I also loved the fact that Tam identified as “They” and how she was both human and werewolf - it was a wonderful parallelism on how one is multiple.

Something I also really enjoyed was the fact that Nova had hearing aids – this was refreshing to see on literature since usually, authors forget to represent broader types of people in their work.

Additionally, I fancied the references to nowadays' pop-culture ("Game of Thrones" puns always make me laugh).

Something less positive, however, was the fact that this narrative didn’t go beyond the problem at hand (the crazy demon haunting the woods). We finish the book knowing barely anything about our characters' background stories. I didn't like to be left in the dark, especially since this was the first installment and should, therefore, introduce the characters and their past.

This and the fact that the last pages were B&W were the only reasons I didn't give this graphic-novel 5 stars.

If you're curious to know more about "Mooncakes" and can't wait to its release (published by The Lion Forge LLC on October 15th), check out its Tumblr and read the first chapters for free!

You can also watch this video of Wendy Xu drawing the main characters while spilling the tea on some behind the scenes content and what inspires her.